These last few days have been a blur and as you can deduce from the title of this blog, I've come full circle. It all began last Monday, when I left Bozeman and headed Northeast towards the Canadian border. By the time I blogged (writing takes a while) and spent another couple hours at REI it was already 2pm. Around 6 I had only made it 40 or so miles through a couple mountains and lots of farmland to Wilsall. I decided to camp there for the night at an RV park which was nice. The next day I was "crushing miles" so to speak and had done 40 by the time you could blink an eye. I stopped in White Sulfur Springs and drank the usual 4 cups of coffee before beginning the climb up Kings Pass into Lewis and Clark National Forest. It was a nice climb thanks to it being paved (I still haven't forgotten how terrible dirt and gravel is) and the scorching 95 degree heat. I actually started that sentence thinking that the climb was fun but then realized halfway through that it wasn't and was really hot. I guess it was just like any climb. It's funny how you can remember things differently than they really were. Anyways, I got to the top at 7000 and some feet (as you always do when you spend 3 hours climbing a hill) and then got to come rocketing down. Stopped in a town at about 80 miles into the day called Neihart to get food. I had eaten so healthy that day and was feeling absolutely incredible. No junkfood or cinnamon rolls or nothing. I started chatting with some folks outside the store and of course this lady pulls out a plastic container filled with homemade cake and hands it to me. I was like "great..." It only made it about 4 miles down the road before getting devoured. Man oh man, was that cake delicious. I could write a whole freaking blog entry about that slice of chocolate chip cake with coffee icing. It was probably the best cake I've ever had and ever will have. Anyways, you're not reading this to hear about food, you're reading this because you like biking and adventures and hearing about miserable things like getting hailed on and climbing hills. You're out of luck though because those next 30 miles were pretty sweet and I just coasted downhill to a place called Sluice Boxes State Park. It was real pretty as usual and I camped by a river with rock cliffs on each side. I hid my food far away in a tree but no bears came looking for me anyways.The next day I still felt like crushing miles so I kept up a ridiculous pace and made it all the way to Big Sandy. That wasn't a whole lot of fun but hey, I was ready to be done and to reach the border for real. I passed a few towns like Fort Benton and Loma and I can't even remember because I was in my own world just biking along eating cliff bars and pears. It was still really hot which was Mother Nature's way of punishing me for going off route and coming out of the mountains. I'm a southerner though and didn't mind it too much. I'll take 90 degrees over 30 any day of the week. No one was even at the RV Park in Big Sandy accepting payment so I just woke up and headed into Havre. At that point I was about 70 miles from Canada and time was slowing down with each passing mile. It was sloooooooooowwwiiing dddddoooown. "35. 34. 33. 32. 31..." Finally it was over and downtown Havre sprawled out before me. All 3 miles and 20 stores of it. While stopping a random guy on the street for directions to Canada, a guy in a Subaru pulled up and asked me where I was headed and where I was from. His name was Jason and he pretty much instantly invited me to come crash that night at the apartment complex that he ran a few blocks away. I was like "yesssss." He told me he was planning his own bike tour and thus was super excited to see cyclists. I left Havre and began the last 34 miles to the border. It was probably the longest 34 miles of my life through nothing but desolate country roads. Maybe 10 cars passed me the entire ride time. Finally I was pulling up to the border crossing and my greeting party consisted of 1 crow that flew by and other than that it was totally silent. So anticlimactic. I walked over to a sign that said US/Canada Border and asked the guy working if he would take a picture of me. He said "no" and then proceeded to inform me "that bear spray on your handlebars there, that's contraband here in Canada and I'm gonna have to ask ya to turn around." I told him "thanks" and that I didn't want to enter his stupid country anyways. Just kidding. Anyways, I did turn around and the guys working at the US side of crossing were a lot nicer. They took a couple pictures of me and let me use the bathroom. Then I headed back down the country road towards Havre. It occurred to me about 1 mile in that I had just reached my goal and my reward was now biking 35 more miles. "Urghhhhhhhhh" I screamed. Soon after though, I realized that I had Jason's phone number, the guy I had met a few hours earlier. Sure enough, I called him and he drove all the way out to get me! Wouldn't even accept any gas money either. When I saw his Suburu coming from off in the distance I almost cried in happyness.